Cold, Cold, Wet Day
by DrWorm
Summary: The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day. Adult George contemplates his son.


*WARNING* Very tame homosexual incest ahead. You ought to be used to this by now, right?

Notes: Written for the contrelamontre no dialogue challenge on livejournal. The Cat in the Hat is by Dr. Seuss, of course. 

Cold, Cold, Wet Day

George McFly twirled his pen idly around his fingers as he watched his son from the porch, watched him through the drizzle and the damp as he laughed with his girlfriend Jennifer, held her hand, kissed her occasionally. He watched them together and remembered reading to Marty when he was barely able to walk, reading him The Cat in the Hat over and over again. So many times that George could still recall the first few pages. "The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day." As Marty leaned in to touch noses with Jennifer, George began to mouth the words, easily falling into the sing-song rhythm that the rhymes demanded. "The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play." He twirled his pen and tapped his foot, bouncing the yellow legal pad on his lap up and down, up and down. As Jennifer's giggle carried thinly across the yard, George brought the tip of his pen down onto the paper and began to write. "The sun did not shine."

Something was bothering him about his son, his son Marty, something that he sensed had never really bothered him before. He ran tense fingers through his graying hair and stared blankly out into the yard. Marty's hair was damp and flat with the moisture; Jennifer's was showing the first signs of frizz. He wanted to call to the two and tell them to come inside before they both caught pneumonia, but the gesture seemed too parental, and anyway he was still watching and thinking and puzzling in his mind. Giggles and muffled words and the gentle pitter-patter of drizzle on the gutters made a good soundtrack for the thoughts that made him uneasy at midday.

George had not wanted to name his third child—his second son—Marty. But Lorraine had been very forceful on the subject and George, never really good at confrontations under normal circumstances, had found it very difficult to argue with a pregnant woman. So Marty had been Marty almost from the very beginning. And that was that.

Watching Marty, watching him grow, watching him in the yard chatting with a pretty girl who quite obviously adored him, more and more, watching Marty had become painful and almost frightening for George. Because Marty McFly—his son, as he often reminded himself pointedly—had begun to resemble, in an almost uncanny way, the Marty that George and Lorraine had met beck in nineteen fifty-five when they'd first started dating. Marty Klein. Lorraine didn't seem to notice the likeness, or if she did, she had kept it to herself. But then it didn't seem to bother her the way it did George.

"It was too wet to play." George glanced up to see Jennifer shaking her head wildly to spray droplets of water from her curls and Marty tilting his head back and extending his tongue, presumably to catch some of the gentle mist. George swallowed a sudden wave of guilt and began to doodle spirals in the margins of his paper.

Lorraine's crush on Marty Klein appeared to have been short-lived. George had been afraid when they had first started dating that maybe she would still harbor some sort of desire for the boy who had dropped out of nowhere and left just as abruptly as he had come. But the subject never came up, and Lorraine had always seemed perfectly content with George, strengths, weaknesses, eccentricities, and all. 

George, however, was surprised to find that, over the years, he could not let Marty go. Something little would bring the other boy back to him, almost every day. A smile from a stranger, blue eyes, a bottle of soda, Lorraine's gentle touch on his wrist. And sensory memories would come flooding back, memories of some sort of strange adolescent love and lust and blind admiration. They would claw at his consciousness, begging for attention, which he would always give without hesitation. 

He had not wanted to name his son after Marty Klein because he had not wanted to be reminded, every day of his life, of the silly childhood infatuation that he had never left behind. But he had never been able to put the feelings into words that he could tell Lorraine without feeling as if he was betraying her in some distant but distinct way. And so they had named their youngest child Marty, and George had silently suffered, as he had known he would. 

"So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day." The rain was beginning to fall harder now, and Marty was tugging Jennifer up the porch steps, and then pushing her toward the house. George stood, tucking his pad of paper beneath one arm and placing his pen behind his ear, intent on going inside as well. Jennifer opened the screen door, which creaked and groaned as she bounced through it and slammed shut with a clang of metal upon metal. Marty had stopped in front of his father, watching him with a mixture of benevolence and—George was bewildered—mild regret. Water dripped down the back of his neck, down his cheeks like tears, even down the bridge of his nose. George ran his hand through his hair again, combing it over his forehead. And suddenly Marty's hand was there too, brushing a stray lock back into place with delicate fingers that danced lightly over George's skin. 

George McFly froze and stared down at his child. The touch was the same, the gesture was the same, and most importantly, the eyes were the same. He inhaled sharply as Marty's fingertips trailed over his cheekbones and traced the line of his jaw, brows furrowed with concentration. When George opened his mouth to speak, Marty moved his fingers over the plateau of his lower lip. Unconsciously, George extended his tongue to lick where Marty had touched. They stared at each other for a moment in silence, and George finally understood somewhere deep inside of himself, and the worry he'd been harboring for so many years finally felt as if it had been lifted, if only just slightly. Marty smiled then, cheerful and bright; only his father could detect the gentle hint of sadness as the boy clapped him on the shoulder and turned to go inside.

And as George followed Marty into the warmth of the living room, he found himself mumbling those final rhymes that he used to relish reading to his children with paternal enthusiasm: "Should we tell her about it? Now, what SHOULD we do? 

Well... What would YOU do if your mother asked YOU?"


End file.
